FUNERAL OF SHELLY. 'You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the back ground, and the sea before.' BYRON'S LETters. W. H. C. H. RANDOM PASSAGES FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE MRS. SOPHIE MANNING PHILLIPS. NUMBER TWO. THE extracts which follow, complete the selections from the journal alluded to in our last number, kept in Providence, (R. I.,) previous to the marriage of the writer, and her removal to West Point. A wider field, novel scenes, and new affections and cares, will impart to the passages which are to follow, from other records, even an added interest and value. 'WONDER where our merriment comes from our laughter, our lightness, our pleasure? Oh, marvel past compare! that mirth, and misery, and fear, trust, doubt, despair, and hope, and discontent, and cheerfulness, should rule, all our lives long, in blessing or in chastisement, the self-same spirit! — the same, yet turned and wrought upon, almost beyond our power of cognizance. How strange it seems, sometimes, to me, that we should think of any thing but the dust wherein we must lie and fade, even as it were to-morrow. Yet here we are, looking now to the past that, to be sure, is certain !- now to futurity; rarely- at least with me pausing amidst, and appreciating, the present. The ties that bind our miserable flitting hours and days, what are they? A joy! a-nothingness! Broken, lost, forgotten, for ever and ever! Father! Sister! Lover! these are deep and gentle sounds; and yet they faint and die away, even as our lips unclose to utter them. - I will e'en to my dreams, and they sometimes are wondrous fair. Oh, how I love to dream! When night with her mysterious hours comes on, heaven! 't is a blessed thing to close our eyes in sleep! Strange, secret sleep; unguarded, unaware! Rain, flood your worst! I soon shall bid your dreariness good night! Ay, drip and drench; there may be brightening skies and sunny fields under my good curtains, whence your damp influence will surprisedly depart, to bother some waking and less fortunate mortal. It soon will matter not to me, I trow, whether there be storm or starlight above, or peace or turbulence below. Good night to lonely rooms, and repining thoughts, and wicked impatience, and unthankful misgivings! Good night to thee, my whilome near companion, and good night to beauteous Anna B- whom I saw this evening at the Mansion House, and likened her to the Peris. * * --- 'To me, who have known that happiness which, God forgive me! seemed high as the highest, and who now would fain be freed from trusting, as I have trusted, to human enjoyment to me, the present is but a thankless boon; the future I cannot tell; the past, oh, bright as Spring!' Often, after longing for change, for dissipation, do I acknowledge the wisdom that places me where and as I am. Were the gaud, the glitter, of constant pleasure, such as I know exists for many, to encompass me, I should be less fit, even than now, to hold upon my daily course. As, it is, I do look * * out upon the quiet stars at night, and hold communion with my eternal soul! 'FANNY H—, the youthful, the beloved, gone down in utter silence to the grave! Her beautiful name, when I speak of lighter things, and her sweet living face, rise before me with a vividness for which I cannot account. Who, oh! who, shall dare approach the mother's and the father's yearning grief, that have looked their last upon a child like thee?-that have stood together beside that unshared pillow, and bent them down to thine unanswering lips, and laid their trembling hands upon thy lifeless brow, and whispered Gone!' Oh, colder to them shall be the summer, with her bursting bloom, than any winter's hour when thou wert by, and spoke, and smiled! Death! it cometh to each; but to see a child of light like thee, laid thus within the trodden dust; to know the throbbing hopes, and joys, and brightened images, that must have lived in thee, and think upon thy grave, 'Doth mock us drearly, in our busy places.' 'Dreary to-day as clouds, and cold, and cankered falling leaves, could make it. Felt more forlorn than tongue can tell. Hoped for a letter, hoped for- enfin, I hope for all things, strive for all, but the sure guidance of my Maker, in the way which leads to peace and perfect rest. Could I but feel the height and depth of heaven above earth; the immaculate truth of things celestial; the perishing ashes of things terrestrial; the folly of human wisdom; the falsehood of human promise! But I feel it not! With the very tears of disappointment, and impatience, and weariness, in my eyes, I feel it not! Knowledge and faith are different things; for I know that life is a sorrowful shadow, fleeing away into darkness; yet, trust not, as we are commanded, to the better and eternal meed beyond. I do not realize that bliss, before which the world's most real, most unmingled good, is but a dim and idle mockery. Eh bien! it is well to know and to repeat, the past, the past is surely and for ever ours! Hope, happiness, confiding days, and kind and fairy eves, and blessed phantasies, have all been mine; and in the very winter of life's course, I will remember. Friends may forsake, foes may pursue, ties that bind all human beings with an undisputed power, be broken, lost, trampled; there are moments, oh, I KNOW it! which quit our memory but in the grave; and these, it may be, are they which mount with us in everlasting life hereafter.' 'I love not the life I'm leading. For the society I meet in P―, it amounts (la plus art) to just precisely 000. I join in it of an evening; talk, giggle, perhaps sing a song; and if I catch the sight of a star in heaven, or the moon stealing in upon nonsense and noise, off, off go my thoughts on their fleet-winged errands, bringing me back no likeness of aught which is near and around me. What has come over me? In other days, the most common have interested, the most simple have satisfied me.' 'If that man comes ever Stiff, prosy. * * * * to see me again, I must be carried out insensible! smiling wretch! What pauses, big with awfulness, I suffered to occur, in the 'dim, distant' hope that he would go; and there he sat, 'yes, ma'am,' 'yes, ma'am,' till my patience jumped quite off her monument. The bare recollection of being subject two or three hours to that youth's narcotic devoirs, makes me as white as snow! Bitter is a dun, protruding chin, looking over a collarless black cravat! Bitter is straight lank hair! Bitter are two great red hands! Bitter is a vile-made boot, with nails in the heel! Bitter is Mr * -! 'RAINY, cold, forlorn! But there is never a day, upon which I do not open mine eyes at morning, with an instant thankfulness that I am alive upon God's earth; that I shall behold the blessed faces of my familiar affection; that I shall hear the sounds of all familiar things; that my full heart is beating; that these veins are warm and glowing with the cheerful 'tide of life!' * 'Looked out this morning upon trees stripped of their foliage, their glittering summer dew and song; upon sear places amidst the grass, and sullenness over the waters, and the brooding sorrow of a wet November day pervading earth and air; yet my spirit, nowise hindered, spread her untouched pinions, and 1 blessed the hour that saw and sees me living! Ay, 't is pleasant! Who shall say, ' There is no good thing in us?' Yet so cry the preachers, and among them, that nasalvoiced abhorrence of mine, the Rev. Mr. — Oh false and fatal scheme ! Do I not know there are existences within a human bosom, of most acceptable beauty, teaching gentleness to the lips, and kindness to the soul, and rising in odor neither distasteful,' nor 'disdained,' toward the altars of yonder unimagined heaven? 'Been troubled all this day about a dress! Even so; the shape of a garment to enfold and beautify the form we are told is clay, is sufficient to disturb our philosophy! And so shall it be, even unto the end of the world. Aspiring now to kindred and likeness with the angels, now vexed and wearied by the meanest insignificance, we all pass on to our journey's end, contending with low wants and lofty will.' Eh bien! 'T were a doleful thing, to often dive into these matters. 6 R 'Been spending the evening with C Found her alone in the parlor. Expressive phrase! when two young women, not past their prime of years, or pride of life, convene to talk. 'Match me, ye climes,' with any thing cozier than C's parlor ; fire, flowers, piano, and closed shutters, and not a man to interrupt, and two maidens, as I said before, met to confabulate. Letters and love, companions, books, beauty, compared, cut, and criticized, as in quick and grand review they pass before one. How women will talk! Alas! only in 'Been to Mr. C 's church, with Mr. C. name is there similitude between my two acquaintances. engaged in all manner of holiness, wearing the outward garb of plainness and humility; the other, seeking after mirth, and wonders, and earthly boons, and attired in a fine cloth cloak, with silk tassels.'* *WE plead guilty to the cloak, but feel impelled to defend ourselves against the imputation of mirth and wonder-seeking, particularly at church, and especially under the ministrations of one who has the power, through the eloquence of deep feeling, and heartfelt pathos, to divert from the minds of his hearers all thoughts save those awakened. by his affectionate labors. ED. KNICKERBOCKER, to return RETURNED from Home - beloved and early home - I bid thee hail again! Changed as thou art from constant cheerfulness to the shadow of sorrow; lost, blessed scene! as is thy sound of blithe voices, and laughter, and music, and harmless, kindly mirth, my very heart is glad glad, though the tear is in my eye among thy still and dear familiar things. God! how they rise up, and speak to me, as with a voice! I hear the echo of my childhood's laughter! I see the gleaming faces of my happy childhood's mates! I hail anew the wonder of the waters! I chase the startled wings of fleeing butterflies. Dear, holy home! might I but die within thy well known sight! But if I am to leave thee, I will tear from my bosom, for the sake of him that loveth me, all wild and haunting memories. Not once hereafter will I seek the dark corner, to gather up thy vanished blessedness, to count thy hoarded hours of merry times and fresh to see thee as thou wert, my home, and weep! -- 'I know not wherefore, but this Sunday afternoon reminds me more strongly and strangely than common, of olden words and days. The warm air is abroad, mocking the reign of dismal February; the snow patters from the eaves in twinkling drops; the sun-just like the blessed sun of other days! is on my head; I think of thee, my lost and sainted -! of the heaven spread out in peace and love above mine eyes; of the earth, with all its vanished or forthcoming tributes, or ties, or trials, stretching beside and beyond me. So the winter is rolling onward and away. The Spring! Perchance she even now seeketh her buds, to awaken their slumber, and her breezes, to attune them to melody. She looketh, perchance, to her skies, that their tint be for ever unmatched! - to her floods, that they bound undelaying, ere long, at her call! There shall be spread over the sweet earth a pathway of greenness, and we that live on its bosom, shall watch along its valleys for feet which come not, and listen among its pleasant sounds for voices which arise not. And this is the cup we all must drink, and in our turn be mourned for a day, and missed for a day, and go down to the dust and the grave! Who will weep and stay for me, when my hour cometh? Perhaps none! This is a bitter and sad thought now, were I to dwell upon it; but when the time indeed is at hand, when the breath is going away, and the eyes can no more lift up themselves to earth or to heaven, and the memories or scenes of the life that is leaving us are blotted and unrecognised - it matters little, I ween, whose hand is on our head, or whose yet glowing lip is pressed to ours- the fading and the cold! It matters not! Thy latest beam, descending sun, Falls to my page from yonder heaven; May spread their holy wings around, 'THERE be surely some days, or some hours of some day of this |